A cheeseburger and large fries are seen at a Five Guys restaurant in Washington. (Reuters/Yuri Gripas)

Picture a heaping burger. Bacon protrudes all around. Cheese oozes down the layers. A creamy sauce soaks the bread. Packed with artery-clogging fat, it looks like a heart attack waiting to happen.

Now, does that make you more or less likely to want to take a bite out of that juicy burger?

For some, names like quadruple bypass burger or instant heart attack hold appeal. Restaurants dub a dish the ultimate, the monster, the grand slam, the garbage plate, or even name it after a cardiac event like a heart attack -- and patrons order it, often oblivious to the health dangers of the thousands of calories, multiple grams of fat, and salt it contains.

The death of John Alleman, an unofficial spokesman for the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas, where people who weigh more than 350 pounds eat free and the motto is "Taste worth dying for," resurfaces this question, first posed when the restaurant opened in October 2011.

Alleman, 52, died Monday after having a heart attack last week while waiting for a bus in front of Heart Attack Grill, the Las Vegas Sun reported. The eyebrow-raising menu at the grill includes options like double, triple, and quadruple bypass burgers and flatliner fries.

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More than 2,500 miles away, in New York City, the "Instant Heart Attack" sandwich is one of 2nd Avenue Deli's specialties -- two large potato pancakes with a choice of corned beef, pastrami, turkey or salami.

Restaurants use these kinds of names to attract attention, says Brian Wansink, PhD, from the Food & Brand Lab at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. They appeal to people who like to be "atypical and a little non-PC," he says.

It's not just cardiac-themed cuisine. Restaurants across the country feature items with names that are red flags for their calorie counts. R U Hungry, a food truck based on the campus of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., calls itself "the original grease truck." The majority of the sandwich names on its menu start with "fat" including the "Fat Darrell," named after its founder, Darrell Butler.

Heart Attack Grill founder Jon Basso has said his restaurant feeds a public appetite for burgers and fries, "the No. 1 and No. 2 most consumed foods in the world," as he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal back in 2011.

Conquering the Grand Slam: What Can It Hurt?

So what makes people want to demolish the "fat sandwich" or heart-attack-on-a-plate in one sitting?

It could be the lack of immediate consequence, says Janelle W. Coughlin, PhD, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry -- Behavioral Sciences. "If I order one of these burgers, I'm not going to clog my arteries just in that sitting; it's not an immediate consequence," she says. "But at the same time you have some not particularly health-conscious people who have the desire to conquer the grand slam or something like that."

Dr. Coughlin compares eating a heart attack burger to smoking a cigarette. "We know it's unhealthy and do it anyway even though we really want to be in good health, because it's not that immediate consequences and we like the way it tastes," she says. "People who smoke, we might know smoking is unhealthy for us, however there is not that immediate consequence of getting lung cancer that day -- and it's biologically rewarding."

And it's funny to think what would happen if cigarettes were marketed as "cancer sticks," she adds.

Joan Salge Blake, MS, RD, a clinical associate professor of nutrition at Boston University, theorizes it may have something to do with the novelty. "I think a lot of people do these things maybe every so often for the sake of doing it," she says, "maybe you want to take a picture of you and the burger and put it on Facebook."

The popularity of extreme eating shows, like the Travel Channel's Man vs. Food, has made ordering these grand-slam-style dishes more of a trend, turning food into entertainment. "But it's not like these things haven't always been around," says Blake, who recalls going to an ice cream shop as a child and getting to order the multi-scoop "kitchen sink" as a special birthday treat.

An establishment like the Heart Attack Grill, nestled in downtown Las Vegas, sees plenty of tourists. Founder Jon Basso says the restaurant gets about 400 "patients" -- code for diners -- per day, but only about 40 people he would call "regulars."

There will always be a portion of the population who doesn't want to be bothered thinking about nutrition, says Blake. The American Dietetic Association surveys nutrition trends every four years, and 20 percent of Americans fell into the "don't bother me" category in 2011. Maybe one of them is placing that mega order in front of you at the deli.

The bottom line, says Blake, is that ordering a heart attack sandwich or a monster burger every so often probably won't lead you to a hospital, so long as you pay attention to your other risk factors for heart disease, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and smoking status.

Lockheed says object part of 'sensor technology' testing that ended ThursdayWhat the heck is that thing? It's fair to assume that question was on the minds of many people who traveled along Colo. 128 south of Boulder this week if they happened to catch a glimpse of what appeared to be a large, silver projectile perched alongside the highway and pointed north toward town.

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